Investment taxes have a substantial impact on the performance of taxable mutual fund investors. Mutual funds can reduce the tax burdens of their shareholders by avoiding securities that are heavily taxed and by avoiding realizing capital gains that trigger higher tax burdens to the funds’...

We find that advertising appears to have significant effects on investor flows at the industry, family and individual fund level. At the industry level, flows are higher in months with more advertising dollars spent, even for non-advertising families. At the family level, flows have a convex...

This article reports a study on the performance of mutual equity funds in Brazil from January 2002 to August 2012. For the analyses, Carhart's four-factor model is used as the benchmark for performance, and bootstrap procedures are applied to separate skill from luck. The results show that...

Pension benefit guarantees have been introduced in several countries to protect private plan members from the loss of income associated with the termination of an underfunded plan. Most such schemes face financial difficulty. Consequently, policy reforms are being contemplated. Economic theory...

Using unique data on mutual fund portfolios with different investment scopes, we study the extent of international diversification. Mutual funds invest in a surprisingly limited number of stocks—about 100. The number of holdings from a given region declines as the investment scope broadens....

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

This paper provides evidence on the investment behavior of 27 state pension plans that manage their own equity portfolios. Even though these state plans typically hold broadly diversified portfolios, they substantially over-weight the equity of companies that are headquartered in-state. The...

Using a novel data of institutional investors' bond holdings, we examine a transmission of the crisis of 2007-2008 from the securitized bond market to the corporate bond market via joint ownership of these bonds by investors. We posit that, ceteris paribus, corporate bonds held by investors with...

This paper examines how labor income volatility and social security benefits can influence lifecycle household portfolios. We examine how much the individual optimally saves and where, taking into account liquid financial wealth and annuities, and stocks as well as bonds. Higher labor income...

The objective of the study is to evaluate the investment activity of the pension funds in Bulgaria. The subject of the study is the pension funds as institutional investors functioning on capital cover principle. On this basis the study examines in details: 1) the concept “interaction frame”...